


A Walk in the Woods

by Jain



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Dubious Consent, First Time, Fuck Or Die, M/M, POV Third Person, Past Tense, Sex Pollen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-25
Updated: 2012-11-25
Packaged: 2017-11-19 12:16:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/573171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jain/pseuds/Jain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles doesn't <i>feel</i> like he's about to die.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Walk in the Woods

**Author's Note:**

  * For [marksykins (Marks)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marks/gifts).



It all started when Stiles fell down a hill into a bunch of thankfully soft and cushiony wildflowers and stood up with a completely inexplicable erection. Masochism wasn't his thing, and it hadn't really hurt anyway; if he had a kink for falling down he would've noticed it a decade ago, since graceful he wasn't; and the flowers smelled nice but not _sexy_ nice.

He clambered back up the slope and wished hopelessly for a jacket or something to tie around his waist, since talking sternly to his dick wasn't helping.

"You okay?" Derek asked, and Stiles jumped. Last he'd seen, Derek was heading westwards; he must have doubled back when he'd heard the sounds of Stiles tripping over himself.

"Peachy," he said. "Did you see any mountain ash circles? Should I go with you?"

Someone not!Deaton and not!Stiles had started laying down mountain ash branches in careful circles about the woods sometime in the past month. They weren't traps--at least, none of the ones Derek's pack had stumbled across had been traps--but they were troubling nonetheless. Derek was determined to map every single one, and he'd dragged Stiles along as insurance in case some of the circles did turn out to be traps, after all.

Derek sniffed the air--oh, awesome, _just_ what Stiles needed right now--and then he growled, "Take your clothes off."

"I, what?" Stiles flailed at him. " _No._ "

Derek looked as though he were about to argue the point, so Stiles said, "No!" even more vehemently. "I have no idea what's going on in your head, man, but--"

"You came in contact with some magical sumac," Derek interrupted. "It's all over you. Now, do what I tell you before you _die_."

"I feel fine," Stiles said in weak protest, though now that he thought about it, that wasn't entirely true. He felt too hot, and his breathing was labored, and his skin felt weirdly prickly in places: his face, his hands, the small of his back, his chest.

"Stiles!" Derek barked in the tone of voice that meant he was seriously worried--the one that sounded five percent concerned and 95 percent pissed off--and Stiles jumped.

"Fine," he said and hauled his tee shirt over his head, took off his shorts. Half of him felt sick with humiliation; he was still hard, despite this weird and unnerving turn of events, and his thin boxer briefs weren't exactly doing much to hide the situation. Not to mention, undies plus socks and shoes: not a good look.

The other half of him sighed with relief at the cool breeze washing over his overheated skin.

Derek turned to leave as soon as Stiles had undressed, and that was just... _no_. Stiles scrambled to follow him, not even sure why it suddenly felt so necessary not to let Derek out of his sight.

"Derek, wait up," he called.

"Come on. Hurry," Derek said, and the unpleasant twist in Stiles's stomach settled a little. If Derek wanted Stiles to follow him, then logically he couldn't be trying to ditch Stiles in the woods.

"Where...?" Stiles asked when he'd pushed through a clump of underbrush and found that he'd lost sight of Derek.

There was a familiar growling snort--the sound Derek made whenever he was confronted by human frailty and all of its attendant annoyances--and he emerged from the trees to the left of where Stiles was standing.

"Come on," he repeated. He melted back into the trees; Stiles plunged after him.

Derek must have decided to slow down a little, because Stiles was able to keep up this time, though Derek was still pushing him at an unforgiving pace. Stiles's heart was pounding a heavy rhythm in his chest, and he felt weirdly dizzy.

"I need to, uh...," Stiles said confusedly. "I need to..." It felt as though the rest of that sentence should be obvious, but somehow it wasn't. If Derek would just _slow down_ and let Stiles _think_ , he knew he could figure it out, but Derek kept moving them along, almost running, and Stiles had no choice but to follow.

Not without protest, though. "Derek," he said in a tone of voice that absolutely was not a whine. "What's the rush?" He had to stop talking to catch his breath a little. Then he said, "Let's stop here and talk it out, okay? I'll do the talking; you can just stand here and look pretty. Sound good?"

He was choked for breath by the end of that plea, and Derek didn't even bother to look at him in response. The strong, silent thing worked for him, but it wasn't the easiest thing to live with. Stiles would've preferred a little less brooding attractiveness and a lot more communication.

Derek disappeared into the bushes again, and Stiles put on an extra burst of speed to follow, worried about losing him.

It was okay, though. Derek was standing still in a small clearing, next to a shallow stream. "Hey!" Stiles said happily.

"Get in the water," Derek said and jerked his head at the stream.

Stiles frowned at him. "Why? I'd rather stay here with you and--" He put his hand on Derek's arm, and _oh_. Stiles's eyes widened and he raised his other hand to touch Derek's skin, to pull him close, to wrap himself around him and...

Derek whipped his own hands up and shoved hard, and Stiles's windmilling arms weren't nearly enough to keep him from falling on his butt in the stream.

"What the fuck, man?" he demanded, glaring up at Derek, before his mind caught up with him and he realized that he'd been two seconds away from climbing Derek like a tree. "What the fuck?" he said again, more quietly.

His legs and arms and chest were stinging, and he looked down at himself to see that he was covered in thin scratches. He must have run through some thorn bushes at some point and not even realized it. He was pretty filthy, too, which couldn't be the best thing for open wounds. He scooped some water up in his hands to rinse off the dirt and a few smears of blood, shivering because the stream obviously had its source in the mountains. It was fucking _freezing_ and the only thing worse than sitting in it was splashing it all over his mostly naked body.

Oh, and he was still hard, which seemed less of an indignity and more of a physical impossibility at this point.

"Derek," he said once he was clean and had tucked his arms tightly around his chest for warmth. "What's going on?"

Derek gave him Glare #4: I-don't-want-to-talk-about-it-but-I-will-because-I-have-to,-and-also-this-is-all-your-fault. "Magical sumac," he said. "I told you earlier, but you weren't listening."

"I wasn't," Stiles agreed. "Also, I have no idea what _regular_ sumac is, let alone magical sumac, unless you mean poison sumac, but I can recognize that and I didn't see any today. So how about you start at the beginning? Just...quickly, because I'm freezing my nuts off, and I'm guessing that it would be a very bad idea to get out of the water right now."

Derek's eyes widened in alarm, which was confirmation enough even before he growled, "Don't do that!"

"Yeah, not planning on it," Stiles said, shivering miserably. "But I still want an explanation."

Derek's glare settled on the middle distance and he gritted out, "It's an aphrodisiac."

Stiles nodded; he'd kind of figured that one out already, what with the irrepressible hard-on and the way he'd tried to jump Derek. There was a long silence. Stiles sighed in exasperation. "And?" he prompted. "How do we fix it?"

"You have to have sex," Derek said, his tone half how-are-you-such-an-idiot and half why-is-this-my-life.

Stiles let out an incredulous snort. "Okay, but, no," he said semi-coherently. He marshaled his thoughts quickly and tried again. "I mean, can't I just..." he made a jacking-off gesture with his hand. His hand disapproved of being taken out of the warmth of Stiles's armpit, and he replaced it quickly.

Derek shook his head.

"Or...I'm feeling okay right now, minus the fact that my lower extremities are going numb. Can't I just stay put until it wears off?"

Derek shook his head again. "It takes at least twenty hours to run its course, usually more. You'd die of hypothermia."

"And I'm thinking that if I get out of the water and just don't have sex, then that'll kill me, too," Stiles said; Derek nodded. "Right, because why make this _easy?_ Um...is there a cure or anything, some kind of antidote?"

Cue Derek's guilty face. "Yeah, but I don't have any. I'm not even sure what's in it; my family just kept a bottle of the stuff in our medicine cabinet."

"Call Deaton," Stiles said promptly. "He might have some in stock."

The guilty face turned into a guiltier and pissed off face. Stiles snorted to himself. Derek was probably still annoyed with Deaton over that whole vampire thing a couple of months ago and had purposely avoided calling him despite the fact that Stiles's _life_ was on the line. Or, Stiles amended generously, maybe Derek just believed that he should have thought of calling Deaton first and felt bad that he hadn't. Either way, he took his phone out to make the call, so Stiles let it go.

He eavesdropped shamelessly while wiggling his toes to try to keep them from getting frostbite and falling off. From the expression that crossed Derek's face after he opened the conversation with, "There's a patch of magical sumac in the woods," he figured there wasn't any good news on the Deaton front.

Derek stayed on the phone for another couple of minutes, saying "Yeah" and "No" and the occasional noncommittal grunt, before he said, "I'll let you know," and hung up.

"Bad news?" Stiles said.

Derek nodded. "He's got the necessary ingredients, but the antidote takes six hours to make. He's started it anyway, but I'm pretty sure you can't last that long."

"I can't," Stiles agreed. It _hurt_ sitting in the water, and only fear of the consequences was keeping him still.

"Okay," Derek said. "Who do you want me to call for you?"

For a long moment, Stiles didn't understand what he was asking; they'd already tried Deaton, and there wasn't anyone else in Beacon Hills who'd have a stock of magical antidotes.

Derek looked at his confused face and sighed. "You need to have sex," he said bluntly. "Who do you want?" and Stiles's heart skipped.

"Oh my God," he said. He'd been so focused on finding a solution to the problem, he'd somehow managed to ignore the fact that a solution already existed. Just...a horrible, traumatic, rapey solution. "I don't... _nobody_." Derek gave him a skeptical look, and he explained, "I mean, there are plenty of people I want to have sex with, but they don't want to have sex with me, which is, you know, a little demoralizing, but otherwise not a problem. But I can't blackmail anyone into having sex with me. That's just...no."

The look Derek gave him then was somehow both sympathetic and frustrated. "Stiles, do you remember the part about how you're going to _die_ if you don't? It doesn't have to be someone you're in love with or vice versa. Just pick someone who cares more about you being _alive_ than about what they have to do to keep you that way."

Stiles shook his head, trying to clear his brain when half of it was chanting _not Lydia, not Lydia, not Lydia_ , as though a moment's inattention and weakness would be all it took for him to do the totally awful thing and beg her for sex in order to save his life. She might even do it--they were almost friends now--and somehow that was the very worst part of it.

"Yes," Derek insisted, apparently misinterpreting Stiles's head-clearing efforts as him saying 'no.' "Come on, Stiles. You've got a bunch of choices: Scott, Erica, me, maybe Isaac, may--"

"You," Stiles blurted out, astonished.

"Okay," Derek said in an obviously relieved tone of voice and started unbuckling his belt.

"No, wait," Stiles said. "That was supposed to be a question. You're seriously offering to have sex with me?"

Derek glared at him for, like, the 500th time since Stiles fell down that hill, but he said, "It's worth it."

"Huh. Okay," Stiles said. Derek put his hands back on his belt with a suspicious look, but Stiles nodded for him to continue. "No lie, I'm having flashbacks to the time you thought it was a good idea for me to cut your arm off," he said while Derek undid his belt and then started on the button and zipper of his jeans. "But I believe in your fundamental utilitarianism enough that I'm at least ninety percent sure you won't feel horribly violated by this whole experience, which at the moment makes you kind of perfect, despite all of the ways that this is a terrible fucking idea."

Derek gave him an unimpressed look at that, but Stiles didn't take it back. It _was_ a terrible idea, not least because he was still seven months shy of his eighteenth birthday and his dad was a police officer. And a million other reasons, too, but the one that potentially ended with Derek on the sex offenders' registry was automatically the worst.

Belatedly, it struck him what it meant that Derek was getting naked--his boots and socks were off, and he was about to take off his pants---and blurted out, "Wait, when you say sex, do you mean _sex?_ " And then, before Derek could call him a moron, "I mean, full-on assfucking. Can't we just trade handjobs or something?"

Derek's expression got incredibly uncomfortable--of course he'd have issues talking about sex; he had issues just _talking_ \--but he bit out, "I don't know."

"You don't know?" Stiles asked incredulously.

"No one I know has ever had to do this," Derek said.

"Okay, fair enough," Stiles said, shivering with more than cold now, though he hoped Derek couldn't tell. It wasn't as though he'd never been...adventurous in his masturbation, but there was a big difference between thinking, 'hey, this is pretty cool, maybe I should try it with somebody someday' and jumping into the sexual deep end when he'd never even kissed another person.

"You won't hurt me," Derek said reassuringly, and Stiles clamped down on the burst of astonishment caused by Derek's words enough to give him a faint nod. It wasn't that he thought butch, taciturn, muscle-bound guys didn't bottom; he watched what some might call a metric fuckton of gay porn, and he knew better than that. It was just...Derek had a lot of very obvious hangups, and Stiles kind of assumed that this would be one of them.

On the other hand, maybe Derek's offer had less to do with his being secure in his masculinity and more to do with his fundamentally stoic nature. Derek had once been willing to _cut his own arm off_ ; getting fucked up the ass didn't even rate.

...oh, shit. Getting _fucked_. "Do you have a condom?" Stiles demanded.

Derek unzipped one of his jacket pockets and plucked one out, which was the first good argument yet for wearing a leather jacket in _June_.

"Seriously, you carry around a condom in your jacket to go traipsing around the woods?" Stiles asked, even as he relaxed a little. With his luck, any unprotected sex would have led directly to an STI and getting Scott's mom as his intake nurse, and then he'd pretty much have had to die of embarrassment.

Derek gave him an unfriendly look. "I'm not talking about this."

"Ooo-kay," Stiles said, putting his hands up. "No problem, dude. Just, if you're hitting on the local coyote population, I don't wanna know."

Derek rolled his eyes and shoved his jeans and underwear off together, and Stiles stared at him. Gorgeous didn't even begin to describe it. Derek should've looked ridiculous wearing only a leather jacket and a tee shirt, but there was absolutely nothing ridiculous about his muscular thighs and his long, thick cock. It was soft, of course, because God forbid that Stiles be allowed to forget that Derek didn't actually _want_ to be doing this with him. But it was still impressive; Stiles was impressed. And Derek was the one pushing for this, even if it wasn't what he actively, like, _desired_ , so Stiles wasn't going to beat himself up over the situation.

As he watched, Derek slipped off the jacket, then pulled off his shirt. Stiles had seen him shirtless about a thousand times by now, but it never stopped being breathtaking, and this time Derek was completely, obscenely naked, which was a whole new level of _guh_.

"Come on," Derek said and held a hand out to him.

Stiles took it and let Derek haul him to his feet, and it was as though he could feel himself losing brain cells as the effects of the cold water on his delicate bits started to dissipate. "Lube," he managed to squeak out as Derek hauled him onto the bank of the stream.

Derek shook his head. "I'll heal," he said, which was fucking _horrifying_ and Stiles wasted no time in telling him so.

His protests might've been more persuasive if he weren't, at the same time, shoving his wet underwear down and pressing his naked body against Derek's and pulling Derek's face close for a kiss. Werewolves always ran hot, Stiles had noticed this; the contrast was even more extreme when Stiles had just stepped out of icy water.

It was pretty much the best thing Stiles had ever felt. Derek's hands cupped Stiles's hips and he pulled away from the kiss to say, "Hang on," tightening his grip, and Stiles realized with a fresh burst of shame that he'd been rubbing his dick against Derek's body. "Here," Derek added and let go of Stiles to rip open the condom packet and put it on for him, and then he turned to drop to his hands and knees on the ground.

Derek's skin had felt like prickly heat against his; paradoxically, not having Derek pressed against him felt like being on _fire_. Stiles sucked in one shocked breath before he practically leapt on top of Derek, thinking of nothing but getting as much of their skin pressed together as possible.

It was overwhelming, and Stiles _needed_ and he couldn't figure out what to do, and then there was a hand touching his dick-- _Derek's_ hand--and it moved until Stiles's dick was lined up in the right place and all Stiles had to do was snap his hips forward and he was _in_.

His hands ran compulsively over Derek's smooth, hot skin: gorgeously muscled arms and chest and, hey!, tight little nipples that made Derek growl when Stiles twisted them gently. They felt perfect in his fingers, but his hands were already moving without his conscious intent, down Derek's kind of ridiculous abs until they reached his dick, which was almost entirely hard by then and which got all the way there when Stiles wrapped his right hand around it.

Derek let out a choked noise. Stiles's hand fell into the jerking off rhythm that was pretty much pure muscle memory by this stage in his adolescence, while his hips thrust again and again and again until he came, goddamned finally, and everything went black.

* * *

Stiles woke up in a strange bed, alone, though he'd bet that Derek and/or Dr. Deaton was in shouting distance. There was a large part of him that wanted to pull the covers over his head and just not deal. But Stiles had had a lot of practice ignoring the humiliating things people had witnessed him doing, so he threw the covers back and got out of bed.

Someone had put him in a tee shirt and a pair of sweatpants, which made this marginally less mortifying than if he'd had to wrap a flat sheet around himself. Also, his hard-on was gone; out of the thousands of inconvenient erections he'd experienced in his life, he'd never been so happy to lose one of them as now.

The house--definitely Derek's, he realized by the time he got to the staircase--was eerily still and quiet.

"I want to talk to you," he said to the air. "I'm going to the kitchen. Meet me there."

The kitchen was empty when he entered it, and he busied himself with filling the tea kettle and setting it on the stove to heat. The sound of running water made him realize how thirsty he was, so after doing that he filled a glass from the tap, as well, and sat down at the table with it to wait.

A few minutes later, Derek slunk in.

"Hey," Stiles said.

Derek nodded warily.

"Have a seat," Stiles invited, despite the fact that it was Derek's chair in his own kitchen that he was inviting him to use. Then a thought struck him and he turned bright red. "I mean...uh...unless that's uncomfortable right now, in which case you should definitely keep--"

Derek rolled his eyes at him before he'd finished that sentence and stalked closer, applying his butt to the seat of a chair with what seemed to Stiles excessive force. "I'm fine," he said.

"Okay, that's good," Stiles said. He'd seen Derek heal from all sorts of excrutiating shit, but it was still a relief to know that Stiles hadn't hurt him too badly.

"How are you?" Derek asked, as unwillingly as he'd ever said anything in his life, judging by his tone of voice, but as though it really mattered.

"Me?" Stiles said. "I'm fine. No more...uh...physical effects. Which I'm sure you could smell anyway, so." Derek nodded impatiently but stared at him as though waiting for more. "And, um, since it looks as though you actually want to talk about feelings now--or listen while I talk about feelings, at least--I'm...still fine. I mean, I definitely didn't expect losing my virginity to be quite so life-or-death, but considering all of the wacky shit that's happened to me in the past couple of years, maybe I should've."

Derek looked unhappy by the end of that monologue, though only normal Derek levels of unhappy, so it might not be too bad.

"Is Deaton here?" Stiles asked abruptly.

Derek shook his head. "Do you need him?" he asked, looking ready to jump up from the table. "I can--"

"No, no," Stiles said. "I was just wondering."

Derek settled back in his chair and stared at Stiles some more, and Stiles sighed inwardly. He felt as though he could sleep for a year, but there were still things they needed to say to each other, and apparently it was all on Stiles to make sure they said them.

"Look, I wanted to thank you," he said. "I know we're not exactly friends, and what you did really was going above and beyond."

The tea kettle whistled, and Derek leapt to deal with it; Stiles let him. If it made Derek feel better to be doing something with his hands, then Stiles wasn't going to begrudge him that.

"I don't want things to be weird between us," he continued as Derek got a mug from the cabinet and a tea bag from the pantry, poured hot water into the mug, fetched cream and sugar. "But if you need me to give you space for a while, I understand. Or if you just want to pretend like nothing happened, I understand that, too."

"I don't need space," Derek said, returning to the table.

"Okay," Stiles said. He took a moment to doctor his tea with cream and sugar and to take a sip. "So we're pretending nothing happened, then, I guess."

Silence. Stiles looked at Derek and felt his eyes widen in surprise, because Derek wasn't just being his usual taciturn self. If Derek didn't want to talk--which he often didn't--he'd still grunt or nod or do _something_ to communicate agreement. But right now, Derek was very deliberately not answering, which meant--

"We're _not_ pretending nothing happened?"

"We can if you want," Derek said.

"But you don't want to."

More silence. A shrug.

Stiles snorted, because snorting was less hazardous to his health than trying to wring Derek's uncommunicative neck. "You really don't make this easy, dude. On the other hand, you saved my life today, so you've earned yourself a whole handful of freebies. Just answer me this: do you want me to push right now, or should I drop this conversation and we can pick it up when you feel a little chattier?" Which, knowing Derek, would be never, but it was the thought that counted.

"It doesn't matter," Derek said. If anything, that was the weirdest part of this conversation yet. Derek didn't _waffle_. Either he wanted to say something and he said it, or--more frequently--he didn't want to say something and consequently was quiet as the grave.

Stiles drank his tea and thought it over, and Derek sat quietly and watched him. There was an obvious reason that Derek might feel conflicted about their topic of conversation. It was pretty strong wishful thinking, though, which alone suggested that Stiles might be mistaken with regard to Derek's thought process. Of course, Stiles had had plenty of experience in humiliation; did it really matter if he floated his theory and got shot down?

He set his mug down decisively. "Okay," he said. "Feel free to stop me at any time. We had magically-induced sex. You don't want to forget about it. I'm thinking--or, well, hoping is probably more accurate--that this is because you like me. Maybe I'm even the reason that you were carrying a condom around with you on our little hike."

Derek stared at him impassively, and Stiles felt the familiar heart-sinking feeling that was every time Lydia had looked past him as though he didn't even exist. "Or maybe you just saved my life because you're a fairly decent guy, underneath all the _grrr_ and the leather, and it was about as exciting for you as performing CPR on your grandmother. In which case, thanks again for saving my life, and I'm sorry for, you know, suggesting that you might be interested in me."

"I don't know what to say," Derek admitted.

Stiles swallowed hard. "The truth is probably your best bet. Whatever it is, I promise I can take it."

Derek nodded. "I do like you," he said quietly, and Stiles did his best to not have a heart attack. "The condom wasn't because of you, though; it was just... I slept around a lot before I moved back to Beacon Hills. I got in the habit of always carrying one." He glanced at Stiles, and Stiles gave him a hopefully supportive look in return, since Derek's expression suggested that a high five would be out of place. Stiles had wondered at Derek's inexplicably monklike tendencies; it was kind of a relief to hear that Derek used to have sex--a _lot_ of sex, apparently--before he got too busy or whatever.

"You're too young for me, though," Derek continued, "and not just because of age of consent laws. I'm the alpha of my own pack, and you're still in _high school_."

Stiles swallowed again, but nodded. That made a lot of sense. He didn't like it, but it made sense. "You don't want us to pretend nothing happened, though," he said.

Derek huffed out a frustrated sigh. "I don't know," he said. "When you suggested that, it rubbed me the wrong way, but maybe that is the best thing to do."

"What if we just...put it on hold for a while? I'm graduating in a year. We could pretend nothing happened until then."

"Okay," Derek said cautiously. "We could do that."

"I just have to ask you one question first," Stiles said. "I was pretty out of it during the whole thing that we're pretending didn't happen, so: did you come before I passed out on you, or was I the worst lay in the history of the world? Lie to me if you have to."

Derek _blushed_ , no joke, and Stiles watched him with a mixture of awe and hesitant delight. "You were fine," Derek said, sounding so unwilling to admit to it that Stiles couldn't help but believe him.

* * *

"So, magical sumac," Stiles said to break the long silence that had fallen in the Camaro. He really needed to learn how to knit or something; stakeouts were way too mindnumbing for him to handle on a regular basis without some sort of distraction.

Derek fixed him with an incredulous look. "Seriously? I didn't think you could actually wait a year before bringing this topic up again, but two weeks is pretty pitiful even for you."

"Hey!" Stiles said, offended. "I haven't said a word on any temporarily verboten topics. This is a purely theoretical question."

Derek looked unconvinced, but he didn't protest further, which was as good as an invitation to continue.

"So," Stiles said pointedly. "Magical sumac. How come no humans have ever noticed that this stuff exists? I mean, speaking from experience, its effects are _not_ subtle. You'd think that at some point in history, humans would've stumbled across some and realized what it does. But whenever you see lists of aphrodisiacs in Cosmo or whatever, it's always stuff like oysters or chocolate.

"Occasionally you might see a historical reference to Spanish fly, along with a huge disclaimer that you _really_ don't want to try that one at home. But magical sumac--which has to be a million times more effective than any of those--doesn't rate a mention? I don't get it."

"It's really rare," Derek said.

"It is?" Stiles asked dubiously. "Because there was a _lot_ of it growing in the woods, before you went to town on it with that herbicide Deaton cooked up. Does it only bloom, like, once every hundred years or something, and I just found it at the exact wrong time?"

Derek shook his head; his eyes slid away from Stiles's. "It's an ordinary plant unless it gets fertilized by an alpha werewolf," he said with obvious reluctance.

Stiles blinked. "And by 'fertilized' you mean...?" Derek nodded, and Stiles exploded with laughter. "Oh my God," he gasped. "Best. thing. _ever._ "

Derek glared indiscriminately at the world and waited for Stiles to stop laughing. He had to wait for quite a while.

As soon as he could breathe again, Stiles said, "So what you're saying is, the now defunct patch of magical sumac in the woods only existed because you couldn't hold it until you got home?"

" _No,_ " Derek said, eyes flashing red, as though Stiles weren't obviously joking. If Derek actually was responsible for the magical sumac patch, then Stiles had no doubt that it had been a deliberate choice--some sort of back to nature thing, kind of similar to Derek's fondness for eating raw rabbits. But then Derek continued, "It was probably Peter. Or maybe the alpha pack, though that's less likely."

"Oh, yeah. Definitely," Stiles agreed readily. "If I had to choose a candidate for 'alpha most likely to shit in the woods when the nearest bathroom's only a mile away,' Peter gets _all_ my votes."

Derek looked slightly mollified by that, and Stiles smiled at him. If it were a year from now, he might try taking Derek's hand in his, maybe kissing him in apology. (Derek had heightened senses; he could totally monitor the possible warlock's house with his eyes closed.) But that wasn't an option-- _yet_ \--so he just offered Derek another homemade ginger snap from the tin he'd brought and tried to decide if there were any color scarf other than black that Derek might be willing to wear, if Stiles knitted it for him.


End file.
